A lot of games are coming out this week, yet the only one I care about is Tomb Raider. Unfortunately, the gods of GameFly saw fit to grace me with a PS3 copy and not an Xbox 360 copy, but given how many points are available only via multiplayer, I guess that’s ok. I prefer the 360 gamepad over the DualShock, but alas, I will raid the hell out of some tombs nonetheless.

Until Tomb Raider shows up, I have two more races to complete before successfully coming in first in every single player event in Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Both are speed runs, and one is a hard speed run, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it, but hopes are high. It certainly doesn’t help that no one on my speed wall has completed this particular run. I’m a trailblazer! Other than that, I’m still loving Fire Emblem and am very happy with my decision to play on Casual. Otherwise, I’d be knee deep in corpses right about now.

New Releases

I’m glad that the reviews for Tomb Raider (PS3, PC, 360) have turned out mostly positive. What I saw at E3 looked good, but there were still enough unknowns for it to not be a slam dunk. I’ve played enough Tomb Raider over the years to know what I want and what I don’t want and while I won’t be able to shoot a charging T-Rex while doing side-somersaults, I think the survival aspects will make up for it. I can always hold out hope for rampaging dinosaurs in the second one. I know that Todd preordered this one, so look forward to his thoughts on the game some time around November.

SimCity is poised to set the hearts of city planners afire with road grading desire. Or something. I can’t manage my household, much less a city of thousands, so I think I’ll sit this one out lest I inadvertently kill all of my residents with a cholera outbreak.

There’s a demo for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Mirror Fate on the 3DS eshop and while I enjoyed the visual style and atmosphere, I’m just not very good at it. The demo is definitely worth checking out if you’re hankering for the Castlevania games of old.

If baseball is your thing, this week has both MLB 13: The Show (PS3, Vita) and MLB2K13 (360, PS3) for all of your baseballing needs. I can’t imagine why you would need to baseball but people are weird, so you know, different strokes and all.

A bunch of other things come out this week including some Forza and Mass Effect 3 DLC, a Naruto 3DS game, a university expansion for The Sims 3 and the Total War: Shogun 2 Gold Edition which includes Shogun 2 and the game’s two expansion packs.

Deals

Target – Free $20 gift card with purchase of SimCity and any Sims 3 title priced $29.99 and up.

Best Buy – Save $20 on the Tomb Raider controller when purchased with Tomb Raider.

About Brandon:
Brandon loves games, which shouldn't be a surprise given where you're reading this. He has written for GameShark, The Escapist and G4, and made them all less relevant as a result.

Yeah, Fire Emblem: Awakening is great! I’m really loving the tactical wrinkles they’ve added to this one, like pairing up, and if the stat boosts weren’t enough of an incentive to work up relationships, the dialogue scenes would stand on their own. I don’t want to give anything away, but the introductory chat with one of the late additions to the roster had me laughing out loud!

I’m very much in Brandon’s camp about playing in Casual, non-permadeath mode. I’ve done my tour of service with the earlier games and, believe me, you’re better off saving Classic Mode for a second playthrough.

According to Brandon’s Twitter feed, there’s no episode this week due to unforeseen circumstances. The announcement came so late that I suspect Brandon discovered a problem with the recording when he went to edit it, and since Todd was on vacation, there was no backup to work from.

Good guess but we had problems getting a full house this week. Todd was on vacation and on recording night, Bill got stuck in traffic for several hours due to an accident. Unfortunately, due to the late notice, I couldn’t rustle up another participant and I had nothing prepared for a solo show. Add to that schedules that are too packed to record on other nights and that adds up to no show this week. With three or four of us, we can weather a last minute cancellation, but with two of us, not so much.

Here’s how the average battle unfolds in Pokemon Pearl: “A wild Starley appears! He flaps his wings and chirps away! Chirp-chirp-chirperee! Okay, with that out of the way, Chimchar, I choose you! Throw the pokeball now…great, there he is. Now atta- oh wait, he’s got to fix his hair first. Ready? Now tackle! Chimchar uses tackle. Now he animates. Now the wild Starley flashes. Now its HP bar goes down. Almost…there….good hit! The bar is almost one-seventh drained. The wild Starly ponders its options! Tackle or growl? They both have fifteen-seconds of animation delays, so the wild Starly decides to put it to a Facebook poll! Autistic Angel shuts off the game!”

Pokemon Pearl is unplayable. Maxing out the text speed, shutting off the combat animations, it’s still like swimming in the slime from Ghostbusters II: achingly slow and you come out feeling really pissed off. I couldn’t stand it back when it was first released, and trying to come back after spending time with LeafGreen, SoulSilver, and White only makes it worse.

Thank god the goal is simply to acquire breeding pairs of the starter pokemon for trade into X / Y. You’d be amazed what people are willing to trade for a purebred Mild Torchic born with Flame Burst. With a little perseverance, maybe I can have all three by May.